Written by David A. Doheny, author of David Finley, Quiet Force for America’s Arts, the post tells how, 75 years ago, the banker, industrialist, and former Secretary of the Treasury Andrew W. Mellon wrote a letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt in which he offered to fund the creation of a world-class art gallery on the National Mall and donate his entire art collection, “consisting of many masterpieces from the Italian renaissance, plus iconic Flemish, Dutch, British, and American paintings from the 15th to the 19th centuries and 31 pieces of classical sculpture. The value of the whole gift is estimated at $80 million, or least $10 billion in today’s dollars.”

Mellon’s gift came with the strict stipulation that the gallery not bear his name, Doheny writes, and not because “the National Mellon” would be an international embarrassment. To learn why he eschewed naming rights in exchange for what may still be “the largest gift ever made to a government from any single individual”, read the full post on Eye On Miami.

Considering many have attributed the “MAM not PAM” uproar to Anglo Miami’s reluctance to see a Hispanic name on the city’s major arts institution, the Mellon comparison may only fuel the fire. Regardless of whether it is relevant to Perez’s donation — personally, I’d find a modern-day instance of Mellon-esque generosity more compelling — it is nonetheless an interesting slice of American art history.